Communication of suicide intent by schizophrenic subjects: data from the Queensland Suicide Register

Communication of suicide intent by schizophrenic subjects: data from the Queensland Suicide Register

Author

De Leo, Diego; Klieve, Helen Margaret

Journal Name

International Journal of Mental Health Systems

Year Published

2007

Place of publication

London

Publisher

BioMed Central

Abstract

Background: Suicide in mentally ill subjects, like schizophrenics, remains unbearably frequent in Australia and elsewhere. Since these patients are known to constitute a high-risk group, suicide in them should be amongst the most preventable ones. The objective of this study is to investigate the frequency of suicide communication in subjects with reported history of schizophrenia who completed suicide.
Method: The Queensland Suicide Register (QSR) was utilised to identify suicide cases. Frequency of suicide communication was examined in subjects with schizophrenia, and compared with persons with other psychiatric conditions and with subjects with no reported diagnosis. Sociodemographic variables, history of suicidal behaviour, pharmacological treatment and mental health service utilisation were also compared among the three groups.
Results and discussion: Subjects with a reported diagnosis of schizophrenia comprised 7.2% (n = 135) of the 1,863 suicides included in this study. Subjects with schizophrenia and those with other psychiatric disorders communicated their suicide intent more frequently than those with no psychiatric diagnosis, and persons with schizophrenia communicated their intent more than those with other psychiatric diagnoses. Seventy one per cent of schizophrenia subjects had contact with a mental health professional within the three months prior to suicide.
Conclusion: The fact that subjects with schizophrenia had the highest prevalence of suicide intent communication could offer concrete opportunities for suicide prevention.

Copyright 2007 De Leo et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Volume

1

Page from

6

Page to

14

ISSN

1752-4458

Date Accessioned

2007-12-20

Language

en_AU

Comments

Page numbers are not for citation purposes. Instead, this article has the unique article number of 6.